Medical errors and patient safety issues have gained prominence in the national dialogue on healthcare in the United States, particularly, since the publication of the 2000 and 2001 Institute of Medicine's reports on quality. Medical imaging studies are prone to mislabeling, such as associating the wrong demographic information (e.g., a different patient's name and medical record number (MRN)) to a patient's imaging examination. Patient misidentification errors in medical imaging can result in serious consequences. An error in the association of a medical image study and patient identification may propagate to future image studies and negatively affect patient management decisions.
The current acceptable protocol recommended by the Joint Commission involves the verification of at least two identifiers (e.g., name, date of birth, social security number or some hospital registration number) when the image is obtained.